Eli Roth

 ( 1972 Births ) 

In mid-2000, with financing from the website Z.com to deliver a five-minute pilot, Roth wrote, directed, animated, and produced a series of Stop motion shorts called The Rotten Fruit. The company folded after several episodes were done, and its domain name was picked up by Nissan for its "Z" sports car. A portion of Roth's work for The Rotten Fruit was done at the Snake Pit studios in Burbank with miniature sets, posable clay, foam figures, two high-end digital still cameras, and a pair of Macintosh computers. Noah Belson co-wrote The Rotten Fruit along with Roth. Roth had co-written Cabin Fever with his college roommate Randy Pearlstein. They based the premise on Roth's experience of contracting a skin infection while riding ponies at a family friend's farm in Iceland in 1991. Much of it was written in 1996, while Roth worked as a production assistant for Howard Stern's film Private Parts.

Cabin Fever was produced in 2001 on a budget of $1.5 million raised from private investors. The film was sold to Lionsgate Films at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival for $3.5 million, the biggest sale of that year's festival. Released in 2003, it was Lionsgate's highest-grossing film of the year, earning $22 million at the U.S. box office and $35 million worldwide. Lionsgate's stock rose from $1.98 a share to nearly $6 a share after the film was released; the company used its newly valuable stock to buy Artisan Entertainment.Source: Lionsgate website financial reports Cabin Fever made Roth a star in the horror genre. In a 2004 Premiere Magazine interview, Quentin Tarantino called it "the best new American film". Cabin Fever was remade in 2016 and directed by Travis Zariwny.

Roth reportedly turned down studio directing jobs to make Hostel. He took a directing salary of only $10,000 to keep the budget as low as possible, so there would be no limits set on its violence. In January 2006, film critic David Edelstein in New York magazine credited Roth with creating the horror subgenre "torture porn", or "gorno", using excessive violence to excite audiences like a sexual act.David Edelstein. " Now Playing at Your Local Multiplex: Torture Porn ", New York, published on January 28, 2006.

In 2007, Roth directed and narrated the faux trailer segment Thanksgiving for Grindhouse and appeared in Death Proof, Tarantino's segment of the film. Roth and co-writer Jeff Rendell won a 2007 Spike TV Scream Awards for best "screamplay" for their work in Grindhouse, sharing the honor with Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, and Edgar Wright. In January 2023, it was announced Roth is developing a feature-length film version of Thanksgiving.

opened in sixth place in June 2007, with $8.2 million; it went on to gross $17.6 million in US theaters. The film, which cost $10.2 million, earned $35 million in theaters worldwide and $50 million on DVD and pay television. Hostel Part II (2007) . Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on September 8, 2011. Lionsgate attributed the lower grosses to the summer release, opposite blockbusters such as Shrek the Third, , and Ocean's Thirteen, as well as the film's workprint having been leaked online before its release. Close to two million illegal workprint downloads were tracked the day Hostel 2 opened.

Hostel: Part II was nominated for six Spike TV Scream Awards, including best horror film and best director. It was on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 20 best horror films of the past 20 years. In March 2006, Dimension Films bought the rights to Cell by Stephen King and would produce a film to be directed by Roth. In 2009, King finished the screenplay, and actors John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson joined the project; however, Roth did not direct.

Through his company, Arcade, with Eric Newman and Strike producer Marc Abraham, Roth produced the horror film The Last Exorcism, (originally titled Cotton) which was directed by Daniel Stamm. Completed in December 2009 and retitled in February 2010, The Last Exorcism cost $1.5 million to produce. It opened at more than $20 million in U.S. sales, and earned No. #1 opening spots in Canada and the UK. The film had paid for itself when rights in a few foreign territories were sold before shooting began. It earned over $40 million box office in the United States, and $70 million worldwide.

In 2014, Roth produced the American supernatural horror film Clown and had the minor role of "Frowny the Clown." He next helmed Knock Knock (2015), a remake of the 1974-shot horror film Death Game, about two women who seduce a married man and then do unspeakable things to him. Keanu Reeves starred and executive produced.

In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Roth indicated that he had suspended work on Endangered Species to focus on 2013's The Green Inferno. Roth directed the cannibal horror film The Green Inferno (2013), which was inspired by his love of Mondo film such as the infamous Cannibal Holocaust. The Green Inferno was criticized for its portrayal of indigenous people as cannibals, and it was described as a "new low in racist film making" by People's World. In 2015, Roth was announced as the director of the adaptation of the best-selling shark novel , eventually called The Meg. In 2016, it was announced that he had left the project due to creative differences.Clarke Wolfe, "Horror Happenings: Eli Roth Leaves Meg Adaptation and New Pinhead Announced", Nerdist, March 6, 2016.

Roth hosted and executive-produced an episode of Discovery Channel's TV series Curiosity, titled "How Evil Are You?" The episode explored the scientific aspects of evil, with Roth undergoing a brain scan and DNA sequencing at University of California, Davis with Neuropsychiatry Dr. James Fallon. Roth also re-created the infamous Milgram experiments for the documentary, with results identical to those from 50 years earlier. Roth directed the pilot of Hemlock Grove, a horror/thriller series, that premiered on Netflix on April 19, 2013. He also hosts Shark Week on Discovery Channel's Shark Week. Roth helped with a project with DreamWorks' TV show Fright Krewe.

Roth's 2018 remake of the film Death Wish opened to $13 million at the box office. The film is centered around a trauma surgeon who turns to vigilantism after his family is attacked. The film was panned by critics as "pro-gun propaganda" and ill-timed in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Roth defended the film, stating that the film was not pro-gun and that he wanted the film to focus on family, protecting one's family, and seeking justice for one's family. Also in 2018, he directed the fantasy comedy film The House with a Clock in Its Walls, his first PG-rated film and his highest domestic grosser to date.

In 2024, Roth wrote and directed an adaptation of the Borderlands games.